The Quokkas are an internationally franchised drinking team with a cricketing problem
Renowned for our fearsome lack of fear on the cricketing pitch, we bring our unique brand of sporting ineptitude and enthusiasm over ability to the ovals of our opponents

The Quokkas win, Rev plays a switch hit (and pulls it off) and The Dog bowls the 25th over, all pretty standard for one of our games…..

With the outfield and the tourists still sozzled from the previous night (one got barred from the Gaso) we had them on the ropes at 6/85 with all the debutantes (Gazza, Robby & Stewart) getting a wicket on debut to go with Jay rattling the castle and the now normal 2 wickets in an over from the reigning B&F who now adds club all-time leading wicket taker to his life achievements.

After drinks, the tourists ring-ins Rev (21), Roley (Rev minus 21) and the league president Fos (58 off 20) got them to a good score of 9/177 with the Dog, Jay and Radar grabbing more wickets. Jay 2/19 and Dog 3/24 sharing most of the spoils. Special note to Pup who took 0/1 in his 23 ball two overs.

After another amazing potato salad and spread from the Dog (is there anything he can’t do?), Radar and Alex got us off to a solid start with 30* for Rohan and a Curtoesque 17* (16 singles) for Alex. The runs continued with Stewart 23*, Dutchy 36* from 14, Robby 27 and 23* from Gazza in the best quokkas innings ever played in a gray cardigan, plus he let the captain hit the winning runs.

Good day to you and welcome to another Australian Summer of Quokkas Cricket, a heady time of year for any fan of shambolic representations of the great game.

This seasons first game is against the might of the Launceston Pub League (LPL), whose genesis began with the Quokka tour to play the Royal Oak at the start of the 2011/12 season. While the spoils of the day did not go to the Quokkas, it did lead to the creation of the LPL, making the great game more accessible to more people, which is (kind of) the point of the whole thing.

And so the LPL have put a combined ‘All Stars’ team together, with a little assistance from the Quokkas and the YPCA and travelled north to kill their maker. Its kind of like the story of Oedipus, though the role of the mother is yet to be cast.

Form Guide:

Being the first game of the season, the Quokkas are in (arguably) their best form of the year. There is a cluster of new faces in the team, a cluster being the collective noun for diamonds, as well as some familiar ones that are a little less shiny.

The game between the Quokkas and the Royal Oak back in 2011/12 ended with ‘the oak’ knocking over the 109 runs required in 12 overs for the loss of only 2 wickets. Highlights of the game included Eds mate Mark driving up from Hobart to get hit for two of the biggest 6s in history, The Big Dog smashing up some play equipment, Morts meeting some locals and Kathleen making her debut.

The only Quokkas who played in that match who are available this time around are Dutchy, Big Dog, Ed and The Rev. On form, the LPL are looking good.

In the Spotlight:

After starting a bet with Local on who could do the best disappearing act, Pup returns to the starting XI this week to grace us with his left-arm swing bowling and powerful pull shots.

Being one of the few Quokkas under the Pension age, there is a bit of pressure on the younger O’Donovan to do the parts of cricket that require running, so naturally Pup has brought a mate (Robbie) down to delegate this to.

Team News:

After spending much of the off season fretting about how they were ever going to get an XI together, the committee now finds itself with a cluster of Quokkas, whereas the LPL are a bit short. As a result, Roley and The Rev will be filling in for the LPL and possibly one more.

The Quokkas XI, at the time of writing, is (in no particular order):

Dutchy (w/k)

Big Dog

Pup

Robbie

Alex Gow

James Gow

Sean Scales

Ray Jayner

Gaz / Gary

Stewart Denmead

Radar

Ed (c)

The nickname sub-committee clearly has some work to do.

Pitch and Conditions:

Conditions have conspired to ensure that the nano-sized ground at Alfred Crescent be available for the LPL touring team, a welcome spot for any touring batsman who doesn’t mind culling a few trees while hitting 6s. The weather is supposed to be a bit cooler than the rest of the week (only 18 degrees) with some cloud cover, though the only movement expected through the air will be off the LPL bats at a great pace.

Stats and Trivia:

This will be the Big Dogs 70th overall appearance for The Quokkas, still a club record

Interestingly, it will be Radars 35th appearance, though Im not sure if that makes him half the Quokka

Despite having a hand average of 22 with the bat and a high score of 37, Alex has only batted in 75% of the games he has played in; Im not sure why team captains may be afraid of winning

James Gow averages an impressive 1 wicket per match and will surely be a cornerstone of Sundays formidable bowling attack

Jay is only 10 runs off 200 career Quokka runs, hitting them at a healthy average of 31 with a high score of 38*

Despite only playing once every other leap year, Pup is still 5th on the all-time wicket-taking list with 20. He only needs 3 to equal The Rev.

Morty’s absence from a BBQ Breakfast at my parents was explained in a text to the Rev around 10.30am, “just got home, don’t know her name, she had tatts, love Tassie”. Not sure the love Tassie bit was true or it was Rev’s editorial. Breakfast was egg and bacon rolls of which Big Dog had 3 for medicinal purposes on the advice of the pharmacist he’d brought neurofen from for his hangover who told him to eat some greasy food. Good old small town service. Paris must have still been getting over the repressed memories of high school the posters for the band “Gay Paris” in the pub brought back and not focused on eating as half his eggs ended up on his Windies shirt.

We headed down to the ground at 11.30 to get a bit of net practice in, well some of us. The absence of Curto, the selected tour keeper and the non-availability of his nearest rival in the all-time wicket taking list, Pup, meant that Big Dog would be behind the stumps and his warm up for this was to literally warm up by lying in the sun.

The atmosphere was starting to build on the picturesque East Launceston Primary School Oval. The Oak had brought a PA to have tunes playing all day, the BBQ was warming up and even a small crown was beginning to swan in. Apart from the quality of the cricket about to be played, it had all the makings of a Big Bash 20/20.

At 12.45 the teams came together for an explanation of “Pub Rules” and the crucial toss. With the batting strength of the opposition unknown it was important to win the toss and bat. A lost toss could result in
25 overs of fetching the ball form peoples backyards. The cricketing gods were on our side and we won the toss and as Captain, I had no hesitation in batting and hopefully putting some kind of total on the board.

At 1pm, Marty and I strolled out to the middle and I faced up to the Royal Oak’s opening bowler, which I smashed away for a single. Their bowlers were all pretty sharp and accurate, with Morty falling for 6, debutant Dan a classy 15 and myself a picket fence 10 that Curto would have been proud of. Dutchy was next to wander back to the pavilion continuing his record of only scoring 0,18 or 22 with the lessor of those scores next to his name in the book. In fact his innings was so short his song to walk into bat to “pass the dutchy to the left hand side” was still going as he walked back. The Rev came in a smashed a Rev like 2 and we were struggling at 5/40. The Oak thought they could roll us, but the calm style of Paris and the dogged exploitation of the No LBW rule by Big Dog got us into the 70’s with Paris becoming the first in his family to hit a six in his top scoring 19 and Big Dog paddling his way to 17 before being run out from the boundary without even attempting a run. Apparently he took his frustrations out with a throw of the bat, just like a real cricketer would do. I missed this as I was with the scoreres trying to match up the two scorebooks. The Oak had a guy to score, but he knew their players just as well as we did and hence the bowling scorecard contained names such as Cargo Shorts, Long Shorts, Beardo and Robinson Crusoe.

The scorecards were fixed as was the Quokkas innings with an unbeaten partnership of 30 between Mark and Steve meaning Kathleen’s batting debut was put off for another week. Our Tassie quokkas got us to 7/109 with backfoot cover drives from Steve, who like his brother got a picket fence 10 and 18 from mark including a big 6 over midwicket. 109 was commendable considering the quality of their attack and the quality of our night out.

The innings break was where the third of my family did their best work with Dad cooking up a storm on the barbie to the praise of both teams.
After some sustenance of a few snags and cans of Boags Red we refocussed on the task ahead, defending 109.

The Rev took the new cherry and proceeded to outdo Steve Harmison’s first ball in the 2005 Ashes by landing his first ball off the pitch with it not even carrying to the batsman. Little were we to know at the time that this was probably the safest place to bowl to. After 10 of a very Rev like opening over I threw the ball to old school mate Mark, who opened the bowling in Grade 10 and had shown form with the bat. It was a tough comeback to the bowling crease to say the least with the next 6 deliveries going 446644 and the batsman becoming yet another victim of the Quokkas tactical retirement tactics. I turned to Morty and his leggies, who I knew with his new unnamed friend in the stands, would put on a magic show with his leggies. It did the trick and the castle was rattled which meant we weren’t going to loose by 10 wickets.

It was always going to be tough to comeback from 1/47 off the first 3 overs, but we tried with Paris and Steve bowling 4 overs between them for only 12 runs. Dutchy welcomed Dan to the team with a hand-breaking return from the boundary, sorry I mean 10ms away and I bowled a beautiful dart which got deposited over the fence and thought “he can’t do that again”. I was wrong, this time it went ever further.
Wickets were elusive and the runs were flowing, but as captain I got the prized scalp over my opposite leader, psyching him out after he missed 2 in a row with the old “do you want me to put a bell in it”.
Next ball he went to hit it to Melbourne and was caught and while the Royal Oak had a convincing 8 wicket victory, I at least had a small moral one.

We handed them the trophy and drank a few more thousand Boags Reds and drank to an awesome day. The highlight was later in the night, about midnight, when their player who was in the book as Robinson Cruse came up to me and said “Nice beard, a man without a beard has 2 mums”.

Thanks to Mark, Steve and Kathleen for playing and to everyone making the effort to come over to the apple isle. The Oak players said they’ll come over our way next year for another game.

Ahead of the 2011/12 season, the Labour-in-Vain Quokkas are heading to Launceston to take on the unknown quantity that is the Royal Oak Hotel. The game is set to follow our standard Pub-league rules of 25 overs, no LBW, no out on first ball & everyone must bowl 2 overs.

The Quokkas will be using the game to spread the gospel of pub cricket, hopefully leading to more social competition in the great state of Tasmania. They will also be shamelessly promoting their 2013 tour to Kenya to support Action This Day!

We’d love to see as many cricket / pub / curious fans out there on the day as we can – Quokka players such as Big Dog and The Rev will even be on hand to sign autographs (probably for each other).